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'Carter': A Red Dwarf of a Martian Adventure

Watch a clip of "John Carter". Transplanted to Mars, a Civil War vet discovers a lush planet inhabited by 12-foot tall barbarians. Finding himself a prisoner of these creatures, he escapes, only to encounter a princess who is in desperate need of a savior. Video courtesy of Disney/Pixar.

By

Joe Morgenstern

March 8, 2012 5:47 p.m. ET

"John Carter" delivers one of its precious few delights shortly after the hero, a Civil War veteran from Virginia, finds himself teleported to Mars. (Actually he's been telegraphed, as he was in the widely beloved novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.) Because of the planet's lower gravity, John is able to traverse its arid surface in mighty leaps and bounds. Yet his excitement, like ours, is short-lived, for the movie's pervasive problem is too much gravity, not too little. A deadly heaviness brings Disney's would-be epic down.

Pictured here, a Martian and Taylor Kitsch (he's the one on the right) in 'John Carter.'
Walt Disney Pictures/Everett Collection

That is not only saddening but mysterious. The director, Andrew Stanton, has given immeasurable pleasure to this planet's audiences through a series of Pixar features he either directed ("WALL•E," "Finding Nemo)," co-directed ("A Bug's Life") or co-wrote (those three plus "Monsters, Inc." and the "Toy Story" trilogy.) All of them were animated, to be sure, while "John Carter" is live-action, at least in part—the majority of the Martian creatures, sweeping vistas and elaborate battles were born of bits and bytes. Still, it seemed reasonable to believe that Mr. Stanton's gifts in one filmmaking mode would transfer smoothly to another, just as Disney's executives must have hoped that he would favor their studio with his Midas touch. (Another animation luminary, Brad Bird, recently directed the new "Mission Impossible" with great success, though he had a lively script and, in Tom Cruise, a certified star.)

Soon after "John Carter" starting shooting, though, the production was beset by poisonous buzz from pop-culture ghouls who take pleasure in predicting disaster. They noted the swelling budget, which had reached a quarter-billion dollars or more, and a marketing decision that changed the original title, "John Carter of Mars"—four words charged with genuine resonance—to two words with all the fizz of a low-rent fashion label.

This time, alas, the ghouls were pretty much right. The best to be said of the weirdly inert spectacle is that the vistas are attractive, in a muted way (yes, Mars is red and Mars is dry, but prettier colors wouldn't have constituted a crime against astronomy); the flying machines strike a nice balance between giant dragonflies and the paintings of Bruce McCall; and the battles are impressive, in a routine way, though it makes no sense that the hero's gift for jumping should give him the power to fight his way through vast throngs of bloodthirsty adversaries.

Those Martians, who are green and obviously alien—they're four-armed savages called Tharks—look like refugees from "Avatar" minus the Na'vis' sexiness, grace and clarity of purpose. The Tharks' battles with one another, and with warring clans of humanoid Martians from the cities of Helium and Zodanga, are tedious interludes—four-armed is forewarned—in a narrative that's merely confusing at first, when you're still interested in who's doing what to whom, but eventually disjointed to the point of incoherence. (I chose to see the film in a 2-D version, though it's also being shown in retrofitted 3-D.)

John Carter himself is less an advertisement for earthly passion than a constant reminder of how desperately the production needed a star in a title role; the buff and handsome Taylor Kitsch gives a flat performance of snoozifying earnestness. Fugitive feelings do surface during quiet moments between John and the beautiful Heliumite princess Dejah Thoris, with whom he falls in love, and then joins forces to save her dying planet. (She's played, attractively and nearly convincingly, by Lynn Collins.) Most of the time though, neither the two leads nor a supporting cast that includes Mark Strong and Dominic West seem to be having any fun. It's as if "John Carter" were a fire pit with plenty of kindling and logs, but no one could find a match.

So what's the source of this baffling failure? Does it lie in the size of the budget? Not likely: Pixar's peerless entertainments have hardly come cheap. Or the difference between live action and the computer process that Pixar pioneered, then raised to the level of dramatic art? That's surely part of it—an animation director inexperienced at getting the best, or avoiding the worst, from the indifferent cast he's been given to work with.

But it doesn't explain the emotional disconnections in the production or in the script, which Mr. Stanton wrote with Mark Andrews, a Pixar stalwart, and Michael Chabon, whose novel, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," just about defined the glories of American comic strips. Not only is there a lack of chemistry between John Carter and his Martian princess, but between Carter and Woola, the lumpy, unfunny creature who eagerly follows him wherever he goes; this in a movie directed by the man who created exquisite love scenes between a life-detector robot and a garbage compactor. Nor does it address—to move away from Mr. Stanton, the field marshal of a small army—the deficits of production design and computer imagery, or explain why the score by the usually brilliant Michael Giacchino should be so undistinguished, to put it mildly.

If I wanted to hazard a guess—nothing but a guess based on what's up there on the screen—I'd say that corporate culture was a significant culprit. Pixar, the matrix of the filmmaker's prior triumphs, has been notable for its stable management, and for a collegial atmosphere in which warm support combines with brutally honest exchanges of ideas. In recent years Disney, the show-business behemoth that now owns Pixar, has been riven by managerial upheavals, and has never been accused of collegiality. This new Disney film, marked by myriad lapses and marketing follies, bears the woefully familiar earmarks of a big studio production that was pulled and hauled every which way until it lost all shape and flavor.

That's not to say pure art fell victim to vile commerce—only that "John Carter" looks like it went through an unearthly version of the internecine warfare on Mars.

'Footnote'

Watch a clip of "Footnote". Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik are father and son as well as rival professors in Talmudic Studies. When both men learn that Eliezer will be lauded for his work, their complicated relationship reaches a new peak. Video courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics.

The subtext of "Footnote" is savagery—not that of Martian Tharks but of rival Talmudic scholars in Israel's Hebrew University. The text, not so simply, is text—the Talmud in its manifold historical versions. Joseph Cedar's wise and playful comedy of intellectual manners, in subtitled Hebrew, could be called "Almost All in the Family," since it focuses on a rivalry between father and son. Eliezer Shkolnik, played with wonderfully grave demeanor by Shlomo Bar Aba, is a senior lecturer with a reputation for meticulous research, but the fruits of his lifelong labors are bitter; instead of receiving the Israel Prize, his nation's top honor for scholarship, he has become a mere footnote in other scholars' books. Uriel Shkolnik (Lior Ashkenazi), Eliezer's middle-aging son, may be a glib popularizer by comparison to his pop, but he doesn't lack for the adulation that Eliezer craves. Instead of a chip off the old block, he's the most proximate reason for a permanent chip on the old man's shoulder.

All of this might have been no more than the basis of a rich character study, but the writer-director, Mr. Cedar, has devised an intricate, ironic plot that's set in motion by a thunderclap call to Eliezer's cellphone: The Israel Prize has finally come his way. I won't reveal any of the delicious complications that ensue, or discuss the slightly surreal climax, but one of the best scenes, intensely serious yet delicately flavored with Marx Brothers lunacy, involves a hurriedly arranged convocation of six men and one nervous woman in a Ministry of Education office big enough for three. And "Footnote" does function as a character study, an exceptionally rich one. The more we learn about Eliezer, who walks with a forbidding forward tilt and dispenses approval to no one, the more we understand Uriel's anxious need for acclaim. A mere footnote the father may be, but he's written a life script for the son.

'Friends With Kids'

A decade ago Jennifer Westfeldt starred in a fine independent feature, "Kissing Jessica Stein," which she wrote with Heather Juergensen. It was a dating-game comedy with a twist. Lovelorn Jessica, turned off by the dreary men she meets, replies impulsively to a personals ad in the women-seeking-women section. Her decision leads to a lesbian affair that's as charming as it is complicated. Now Ms. Westfeldt has written and directed a straight comedy with herself in another starring role. Once again there's a twist, but no charm at all.

Watch a clip of "Friends With Kids". Two best friends decide to have a child together while keeping their relationship platonic, so they can avoid the toll kids can take on romantic relationships. Video courtesy of Roadside Attractions.

She plays Julie, whose biological clock has developed a stentorian tick. Instead of marrying, Julie enters into a pact with a lifelong friend, Jason (Adam Scott). They'll have a baby, then share custody while continuing to date other people. It's the perfect solution, the anticouple agrees, to procreating while still preserving romance in their respective lives. Why they would want to have a baby is another question, given the horrors that child-raising brings to the lives of their married friends—domestic quarrels, endless encumbrance and, soon enough in the case of their own kid, serial attacks of explosive diarrhea.

It's not a pretty picture in any sense. "Friends With Kids" wants to be a broad satire of American mores. (The equipment required for a parents-and-child expedition to a local park is roughly equivalent to what climbers carry forth from base camp on Mount Everest.) But it's shrill in tone, awash in unexamined narcissism—kids are just pretexts for laughs, rather than objects of love—and afflicted by explosive verbal diarrhea. There's simply no base line of normal human activity, let alone intimacy, until the anticouple finally re-examines their anticommitment credo. By then everyone has been so selfish and dislikable that our commitment to the film is lost. The cast includes Kristen Wiig, Chris O'Dowd, Maya Rudolph, Jon Hamm and Megan Fox, whose character, though marginal, manages to outshallow everyone else.

DVD Focus

'The War of the Worlds' (1953)

Mars invades Earth in this sci-fi classic, based on an H.G. Wells novel, which George Pal produced in 1953. (The film won an Oscar for special effects.) Watching the march of the Martian machines across our country, you're taken in not by the dazzling reality of the visual tricks but by their resourcefulness and charming artificiality. In our digital age, when anything is possible, movie magic can be daunting or assaultive. Half a century ago, special effects were invitations to willing wonderment. That said, Steven Spielberg's 2005 remake, with Tom Cruise and fancier effects, is enjoyable too.

'Wonder Boys' (2000)

Michael Chabon wrote the novel that Steve Kloves adapted for Curtis Hanson to direct. Michael Douglas is Grady Tripp, once a wonder boy but now a pothead teacher of creative writing. Tobey Maguire is James Leer, Grady's best student. He is also an extravagantly gifted liar, if not a budding lunatic. The movie, set in Pittsburgh, starts as a screwball comedy about the professor's travails, and his student's knack for making them worse. Sneakily, though, and ever so adroitly, the film invests Grady's absurdity with humanity and his thwarted hopes with possibilities, while tracking his roundabout journey to true love.

'Bridesmaids' (2011)

Two of the three leading women in "Friends With Kids"—Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph—starred in last year's comedy hit, but I'm bringing up the film again because Chris O'Dowd, in an inspired piece of casting, was in it too. He's the man behind the radar gun, an Irish cop named Rhodes who speaks with gentle humor and unforced wisdom, whether he's citing Ms. Wiig's forlorn maid of honor, Annie, for dysfunctional taillights, or confronting her, to her confusion and dismay, with indisputable evidence of her competence.